A rigid ice shell over a shrinking interior makes for pressures low enough to boil. Our explanation of the outer Solar System has revealed a host of icy moons, many with surface features that suggest a complex geology. In some cases, these features—most notably the geysers of Enceladus—hint at…
Researcher seek to understand the various uses of wild mushroom species. Like many mushroom harvesters, I got interested in foraging for fungi during the COVID-19 pandemic. I had been preparing for a summer of field work studying foraged desert plants in a remote part of Australia when the pandemic…
“Why is reverse-engineering prohibited… for a company built on openly hackable systems?” Some members of the maker community are distraught about Arduino’s new terms of service (ToS), saying that the added rules put the company’s open source DNA at risk. Arduino updated its ToS and privacy policy this month,…
Light is the greatest threat to 19th-century masterpieces like James Ensor’s The Intrigue, study finds. The emergence of synthetic pigments in the 19th century had an immense impact on the art world, particularly the availability of emerald-green pigments, prized for their intense brilliance by such masters as Paul Cézanne,…
Yet another twist in the championship with two more weekends to go. AT&T provided flights from Washington, DC, to Las Vegas and accommodation so Ars could attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. LAS VEGAS—Formula 1 held the third annual Las Vegas Grand…
Plan will offer guaranteed payments for British startups making AI hardware The UK government will promise to buy emerging chip technology from British companies in a 100 million pound ($130 million) bid to boost growth by supporting the artificial intelligence sector. Liz Kendall, the science secretary, said the government…
Organizers had a way for attendees to track CO2 levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived. Hacker conferences—like all conventions—are notorious for giving attendees a parting gift of mystery illness. To combat “con crud,” New Zealand’s premier hacker conference, Kawaiicon, quietly launched a real-time, room-by-room carbon dioxide monitoring system…
Voting system required three keys. One of them has been “irretrievably lost.” One of the world’s premier security organizations has canceled the results of its annual leadership election after an official lost an encryption key needed to unlock results stored in a verifiable and privacy-preserving voting system. The International…
Curiosity Stream’s owner has more content for AI companies than it does for subscribers. We all know streaming services’ usual tricks for making more money: get more subscribers, charge those subscribers more money, and sell ads. But science streaming service Curiosity Stream is taking a new route that could…
There are fan-made browser versions of Red Alert, Unreal Tournament, and more. Over the past couple of weeks, friends and colleagues have made me aware of multiple ingeniously implemented, browser-based ways to play classic MS-DOS and Windows games with other people on basically any hardware. The late 1990s and…
